DescriptionThis project involved the research into the 1995 Ghost in the Shell. Drawing mainly from Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Carl Silvio, Jane Chi Hyun Park, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Steven Culver, Steven T. Brown, Julie Clarke, and others, I apply cyborg theory and argue that the main character Motoko Kusanagi is a mechanized laborer for the state, exploited and dehumanized as a Japanese female cyborg who seeks purpose outside of the limitations of Section Nine, and her success in such an endeavor. Most others who have studied Ghost in the Shell focus mainly on gender, the body, or the film’s general message of technology integrating inevitably with humanity, but not Motoko’s individual journey as an exploited tool to a completely free individual, her mechanical nature humanizing her more so than any actual human character. The film shows the similarities between the mechanical and the human, and how dangerous it is to fear technological changes and evolution, to fear that it may escape our control—it already has, and we must embrace it, just as Motoko does, and becomes better for it.